3+ day, 17+ hour ago  (717+ words) Graecopithecus freybergi lived 7.2 million years ago in the dust-laden savannah of the Athens Basin. This view from Graecopithecus freybergi's place of discovery, Pyrgos Vassilissis, to the southeast over the plain of Athens and under a reddish cloud of Sahara dust;…...

3+ day, 22+ hour ago  (376+ words) Prehistoric Europeans approached plant foods selectively, consciously choosing certain species over others, and combining these with specific animal ingredients; such practices would have created new esthetics, tastes, flavors and textures that would be hard to achieve without pottery technology and…...

1+ week, 3+ hour ago  (537+ words) Prehistoric mating preferences help explain why modern humans have small amounts of Neanderthal DNA almost everywhere in their genome except on the X chromosome. Image credit: Gemini AI. "Along our X chromosomes, we have these missing swaths of Neanderthal DNA…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago  (860+ words) Early humans living in Europe some 40,000 years ago developed a conventional system of geometric signs " deliberate, repeatable markings that went beyond decoration and hint at an early form of structured communication, according to a study published this week in the…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago  (716+ words) Labeled MLP-3000, the new Paranthropus fossil was found in the Mille-Logya research area. The specimen consists of an edentulous mandibular corpus with preserved tooth roots and an associated partial molar crown. Geological and magnetostratigraphic evidence place the fossil securely between…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago  (641+ words) A newly-described partial skeleton from the Koobi Fora Formation in northern Kenya is giving paleoanthropologists their most complete picture yet of Homo habilis " one of the earliest members of the human genus " revealing just how physically distinct it was from…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago  (610+ words) Leang Bulu Bettue in the Maros-Pangkep karst area of South Sulawesi. Image credit: Burhan et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0337993. At Leang Bulu Bettue, Griffith University Ph.D. candidate Basran Burhan and colleagues unearthed a rich sequence of artifacts, stone tools and…...

2+ mon, 1+ day ago  (333+ words) Reconstruction of Homo erectus. Until now, paleoanthropologists have debated where the last common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans lived. Genetic evidence suggests that this ancestor existed between about 765,000 and 550,000 years ago, but the fossil record has remained uncertain....

2+ mon, 3+ day ago  (470+ words) Sahelanthropus tchadensis was essentially a bipedal ape that possessed a chimpanzee-sized brain and likely spent a significant portion of its time in trees, foraging and seeking safety," said New York University's Dr. Scott Williams. Despite its superficial appearance, Sahelanthropus tchadensis…...

2+ mon, 2+ week ago  (453+ words) This image shows a Neanderthal and a human kid. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum. During the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic, Neanderthal populations across Europe, especially on the Iberian Peninsula, experienced a steady decline leading to their extinction....